


the remedy is the experience (i won't worry my life away)

by TheJGatsby



Series: god knows we're worth it [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Sick Character, in which ben is a mother hen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 00:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6543415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey gets sick, and she isn't very good at letting people look after her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the remedy is the experience (i won't worry my life away)

**Author's Note:**

> a discussion with [ViciousRhythm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ViciousRhythm/pseuds/ViciousRhythm) got mildly out of hand and this is the result
> 
> Title from Remedy (I Won’t Worry) by Jason Mraz

 

Sometimes Rey kind of wonders why she still has her own apartment- it’s not as if she’s ever really  _ there _ . Maybe once a week, just so she can keep saying she lives there. Even before she and Ben started actually dating like real people instead of just sex and longing like emotionally stunted weirdos, she spent probably a little less than half her nights crashing on the boys’ couch.

But it’s times like this, stumbling in halfway through her workday with a ridiculous fever, that she’s glad she hasn’t given up her shitty little studio.

Rey barely makes it through the door before she collapses back against it, fumbling with the lock until she feels it click and then sliding down to the ground. She presses her hot cheek against the cool tile and nearly whimpers with relief, closing her eyes tight against her pounding headache. It doesn’t feel nice or anything, at least no nicer than standing up, but she’s so tired and her muscles hurt so bad that it’d probably take an actual earthquake to move her.

She’s not sure when she falls asleep, but she barely wakes up long enough to stagger to the bathroom and collapse against the toilet before she’s reintroduced to everything she’s eaten for the past week, she’s pretty sure. When her stomach finally settles, she pushes herself up enough to flush it away and then curls up on the floor and passes back out.

A few seconds (or maybe hours? She’s not sure, it honestly could have been days) later, she cracks her eyes open again at the sound of someone pounding on the front door and shouting her name. She groans and presses her hands against her ears to block out the noise, and then it stops abruptly, replaced by muffled swearing, and then the door is swinging open.

“Fucking- Rey, are you here?” Ben calls, almost tripping over her backpack in the doorway. “Seriously, this- oh, fuck. Shit. Rey, are you okay? Wake up, sweetheart, can you sit up?”

His hands aren’t as cold as the tile floor, so she resists his touch, whining out a truly pathetic, “Nooo, you’re too hot.” And then, with a snort, “Hot damn.”

“Very funny,” he says, completely humorless. “Christ, you’re burning up.”

“How did you get in? You don’t have a key.”

“I picked the lock.”

“I taught you that,” she says, smiling dizzily.

“Yes,we’re all very proud. How long have you been down here?”

“That’s a good question for someone who’s been conscious, which I have not,” she mumbles, falling against his shoulder as he pulls her into a sitting position. “Probably a while. I left halfway through the day.”

“Yeah, yesterday. Have you been here since then?”

“Time flies, babe.” She tries to grin at him but he just looks… worried and a little hurt. “I’m fine, really.”

“Liar.” He slips one arm under her knees and another under her shoulders, lifting her carefully. “Come on, let’s get you into bed.”

Rey squeaks as she’s pulled off the floor. “Put me down, Ben, I’m probably contagious.”

“Cry me a river,” he says, gruff, settling her a little closer against his chest.

“I can walk!”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s why you were lying on the bathroom floor for twenty-four hours.”

“I was  _ not _ , I was lying in front of the front door and then I walked to the bathroom.” She says it like she’s trying to prove a point, but his arms tighten around her.

“Fuck, Rey, that’s worse.” He sets her down gently in her bed, bending over to press a kiss to her forehead, then moving down and taking off her shoes. Rey watches him set them down side-by-side next to the dresser, impeccably neat like he just is, and rifle through them for a moment until he finds a set of pajamas- his, of course, because she hasn’t owned pajamas that didn’t first belong to one of the boys in years. “Can you put these on yourself or do you want me to.”

“I can do it,” she says, reaching out her hand for them. He quirks an eyebrow at her after a long pause and she realizes she actually hasn’t moved. “Listen, I’m fine.”

“You’re so not fine. Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?” He’s trying to tug her shirt over her head, and she’s trying to help him, she really is, but her body doesn’t seem to want to move the way she tells it to.

“No hospital,” she says, slurred but firm. “I hate hospitals.”

Ben sighs heavily, unhooking her bra and dropping it onto the floor. “I know. But if you’re not better by this time tomorrow, we’re going, okay?”

“You worry too much.” She frowns at him as he moves down to unbutton her jeans and his hands tighten around her waist.

“No, apparently I don’t worry  _ enough _ , because you were lying on the fucking  _ floor _ for twenty-four hours  _ unconscious _ .” Rey hugs her arms against herself at the harshness in his voice and shoves herself into a sitting position, reaching out to take the pants from him. He meets her with a severe look and she’s not sure if the heat on her face is the fever or embarrassment.

“I can take care of myself,” she snaps, trying to snatch them away from him, but he holds onto them tight and at the end of the day she’s feverish and weak so she just collapses back onto the pillow and throws an arm over her face. His hands are gentle while he tugs the pants onto her and then tucks her blankets in tight around her before walking out of the room.

“Here, drink this.” She dozed off again while he was gone, and he’s back now with a water bottle in one hand and some pills in the other, and after drinking the whole bottle she feels approximately eight million times better. “How do you feel?”

“Slightly less like I’m going to die.”

“Progress,” he says, crawling over her to lie down on the empty side of her bed.

“No,” she says, waving her hand ineffectually at him. “You’ll get sick.”

“I really, really don’t care,” he says, lying on top of the blankets and carefully smoothing her hair away from her face.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, tugging the blankets up tighter and rolling onto her side to face him.

“What for?”

“That you have to be here mother-henning me like some stupid kid.”

He smiles at her, soft. “Don’t be sorry, sweetheart.”

“But, it’s- I can take care of myself, okay? It’s what I  _ do _ .”

His hand on her hair stills and then he’s pressing his forehead against hers, his arm tight around her shoulders. “You don’t have to, okay? You just- I know you have this thing about independence, the-only-one-I-need-is-me or whatever, and that’s great and you’re so tough and brave and I admire you so much for it, but you don’t  _ have _ to only depend on yourself. You have us, me and Poe and Finn, and we love you and we worry about you and we’ll take care of you when you need it.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, love, I just- I didn’t hear from you for a day, and then no one at the shop had seen you, and you weren’t answering your phone. I was freaking out. I thought you were dead.”

“Drama queen.” She can’t quite look him in the eyes, though, all his half-wrecked concern. He gets so worked up over her and as self-conscious as it sometimes makes her feel, she loves it at the same time, that his whole world seems to center on her, seems like it’s  _ always _ centered on her.

“Shut up. You practically were.” 

“It’s just a flu.”

“Yeah, but it could have been worse. And it doesn’t matter how bad it is, Rey, you don’t have to justify needing someone. And I like when you need me.”

Rey thinks she might cry, and she feels incredibly pathetic, so she presses her face into his shoulder, curling up closer to him. “I love you,” she says, muffled and sniffly.

“I love you, too,” he says, turning his head awkwardly to kiss her hair. They stay like that, curled in tight against each other, Ben tracing gentle patterns on the back of her neck, till she finally dozes off into a feverish sleep.

When she wakes up, she feels better, and he’s lost his shirt and crawled under the blankets, her head on his chest and his arms tight around her. She wiggles out of his grip just enough to kiss the corner of his jaw, and the motion is enough to wake him up just a bit.

“How do you feel?” he asks, voice scratchy and groggy.

“Good.” She drums her fingers lightly across his chest, appreciating the firm warmth of his skin, trying to gather her thoughts. “When I was seven,” she says, finally, quietly, “in one of the foster homes, I was running and wiped out on the concrete. I started crying and I just remember Laurine putting the phone down long enough to tell me I knew where the fucking band-aids were and not to expect her to baby me. I think that was one of the times it just… hit me that I was  _ alone _ , that my parents weren’t around to take care of me anymore, and…. I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t want help, it’s just easy to forget I can get it.”

Ben’s never been very good with putting his feelings into words, so he just wraps his arms around her as tight as he can without crushing her and presses his face into her hair. She hides a smile in his shoulder, practically brimming over with the feeling of being safe and cared for and so loved it almost hurts.

“Thank you for looking after me,” she says, kissing his collarbone.

“It’s my job,” he says, half asleep. “You’re my Rey. Besides, if I get what you had, you have to nurse me back to health.”

“You’re going to be a giant needy diva about it, aren’t you?” she asks, fond.

“It’s almost like you know me.”

“Yeah. Almost.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
